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Flood Waters [2011] [Book] The worst disaster to hit Victorian Britain happened in Sheffield on the night of March 11 1864 when more than 240 people lost their lives in less than an hour, swept to their deaths or drowned in their beds by 700 million gallons of water which burst like a fury through a breach in the Dale Dyke Dam above the city. The flood, an 18ft high wall of water, travelled at nearly twenty miles per hour through the heart of Sheffield, sweeping up everyone and everything in its path. Flood Waters, by Maggie Lett and Geoff Rowe, tells the fictionalised story of how lives were lost and torn apart that night and how the murky world of Sheffield’s underbelly schemed to grab the pickings. The main characters are pure invention: others are based on real people involved in the disaster. The facts relating to the flood itself – the dam, the burst, the destruction, the inquest – are historically correct, according to the records of the time. This is the first novel by former Morning Telegraph/Sheffield Telegraph journalist Maggie Lett and Geoff Rowe who has held a variety of jobs spanning pensions administrator to binman.
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